Maradona can keep sulking but Kroos hails Ronaldo

Abu Dhabi: Diego Maradona can keep arguing if Cristiano Ronaldo is the greatest player ever or no and make nasty statement like “quit [expletive] around” if you wants to become the greatest player of all time.

But CR7 is quietly going about his business to endorse his claim that he is “the best that ever lived” as he said after winning the Ballon d’Or trophy for a fifth time.

With a brilliant free-kick Ronaldo fired Real Madrid past Gremio in the final and had also netted one in the semis to see his team clinch Club World Cup title. His teammate and midfielder Toni Kroos was raving about the Portuguese sensation.

“We know if he is on the pitch he tries to help us. He tries to score and he did it again in both matches. We don’t need to speak about how important he is to us,” said the German adding that winning the Club World Cup was special.

“A trophy it is always special. We knew they are a better team than Al Jazira for example and they played a good first half. But I think we felt on the pitch that they got tired a little bit on the second and everything was a little bit more easy. But then we had to work to score and then look to finish which we did,” said Kroos, who felt the road to Club World Cup was more tough than playing in it.

“It means a lot of course winning five titles and you can say it is a special year. Maybe you can say this was the easiest title to win. The biggest challenge is to arrive here because you have to win the Champions League. At the end of the year it is never easy as you have a long trip to be here,” said Kroos, who felt that his title would give very little edge for his side going into the crucial Clasico against Barcelona on December 23. “For this game (Barcelona) you don’t need anything special before or any motivation or anything. It’s better to go with a good feeling back to Madrid but this game is special whatever happens before,” said Kroos, who is also looking forward to the challenge of meeting Neymar’s Ligue 1 top club Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League’s tricky round of 16.

“The experience from the last year is that you have to beat the best to win this competition. We did last year. We beat Bayern, we beat Atletico Madrid. We played Juventus, they put out Barcelona before.”